In 1098, Abbot Robert of Molesme left the monastery he led there, and founded a new community in a marshland south of Dijon, known as Cîteaux.A former Cluniac monk, he found their way of life too extravagant and too far from the austerity and simplicity of the Benedictine Rule.Though he was soon forced to return to Molesme, the monastery in the marsh continued on and eventually grew into the most famous of the monastic reforming Orders of the 12th century.

I find the whole holding churches thing fascinating, but not fascinating enough to study it right now.[Stephen Harding (right) and the Abbot of St. Vaast in Arras (left) present their churches to Mary][c. 1125, source: Wikimedia Commons]

It was under its second and third abbots that Cîteaux rose to prominence.Under Alberic, the community gained official recognition and began wearing their distinctive white habit.The third abbot, Stephen Harding, expanded the order.He laid out its central Constitution, codifying their ideals.He emphasized in particular the importance of manual labor,* the refusal to admit children, and the rejection of the extravagance of Cluny.Stephen also gave over the west wing of the monastery to the conversi (lay brothers) who worked the community’s farms.** In 1111, Stephen sent out a group of monks to found the first Cistercian daughter house: La Ferté.Three more daughter houses (Pontigny, Morimond, and Clairvaux) followed in the next two years.Under the guidance of Cîteaux, these four houses became the core of the new order and any new houses were to answer to one of them.A system of visitation was set up, with the abbot of each monastery responsible for overseeing its daughter houses.

Oh St. Bernard. I may sometimes disagree with you and sometimes think you were something of an intolerant ass, but damn you had charisma.[Bernard of Clairvaux in an Initial B, 13th century, source: Wikimedia Commons]

The most famous member of the Cistercian Order and the one person most responsible for its rapid expansion was St. Bernard, founder of Clairvaux.A charismatic and highly public figure, he had his fingers in many pies.He advised people from all classes of society, oversaw or inspired the foundation of more than 200 new Cistercian monasteries, and publicly supported the expansion of other new forms of monasticism.*** Eventually, however, the Cistercians ran into many of the same problems faced by Cluny.Despite the desire to retreat from the world, the Order’s popularity and success at cultivating previously unusable land dragged it back into contact with the secular world. The Order had grown too large to manage effectively, and by the 13th century, the mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) had eclipsed it in popularity.It remains, however, a powerful and respected Order to this day, both in its original observance and in the Trappist Order, reformed in the 17th century.

*Many monasteries at this time merely paid lip service to this ideal, which became central to the Cistercian Order. **Thus taking Cîteaux out of the systems of manorialism and fief holding. ***Two examples of this would be the Templars and the Beguines.